


i'm too weak (to walk away)

by notsosweetsugar



Series: like a ghost with no soul, like a heart with no beat [3]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Canon Typical Violence, F/M, Mind Control, New SHIELD, coulson is way more friendly in this, grant ward is not hydra, hydra!melinda may, mentions of depression, most of the characters is mentioned/appears only once or twice, post season 1 with some changes, season 2 au-canon divergence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-06-03 16:14:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6617413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notsosweetsugar/pseuds/notsosweetsugar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>shield is still picking up the pieces, but skye and ward are happy - as much as they can be, when world is literally falling apart around them. that is until one faithfull mission. as a result of a mysterious explosion, ward gets kidnapped. and skye will do everything to get him back.</p><p><strong>aka</strong> season two that never was (there are two additional prequels in the series).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the explosion

**Author's Note:**

> \+ i seem to write quite a lot these days - that's probably because i don't have time to do that at all! anyway, there it is, a brand new skyeward fic. it's the main story in the final call 'verse, which means it's a continuation of two fics in this series.  
> \+ i don't have a beta and i don't own anything but the idea.  
> \+ as always, i will post whenever i feel like it, which means it's not going to be too often.

_Do you sometimes have moments of impact? Moments, when you think nothing gets to you and then you just get flooded by all those emotions, and you're just unable to push them back, to get rid of them. I feel that sometimes. ~~Most of the time.~~_

 

It all happens in a matter of seconds – one moment, they're both together, fighting a bunch of nameless Hydra agents and then, in a splitsecond, she's lying in the middle of the grubble, unable to breathe because of all this dirt. She can't hear a single thing, there's only this terrible silence, like always after the huge explosion.

And that's when it hits her. The explosion. She remembers it all. She remembers the mission, the mission to save one of their own. She remembers Grant Ward fighting by her side, she remembers Trip yelling something she couldn't hear, she remembers the very same agent they came looking for stabbed in the back by one of Hydra agents.

She remembers the heartache.

With all the strong will she has left, she moves her leg. It seems there's some hardcore on her, but not enough to make her unable to get up. And she does just that, slowly and painfully. There's dirt on her face and dirt everywhere, bits of bricks and concrete. And bodies.

_Oh god, bodies._

She finally stands up and starts walking. She falters, she trips, but she walks. Because everything's razed to the ground and there's one, huge open space. The sun is shinig which is kind of ironic, considering the tragedy.

The base was outside the city and there's nothing in about seventy miles radius, but someone will have to notice it all crumbled, sooner or later.

The first body she passes is the fallen SHIELD agent, the one they came to rescue. It's a woman, not much older than her. Coulson told them her name was Jessica, Jessica Bishop. An ordinary name for an extraordinary woman. Skye kneels next to her and closes her eyes.

If she was a christian, she would pray, or something like that. But she's not – she only entered the church once since she left the orphanage, and it was during a mission.

Then, she finds two Hydra agents. One is difinitely dead, with his eyes open widely, the other one's probably still breathing, barely. She doesn't stop to check.

When she finds other bodies of Hydra agents, but Trip and Ward are nowhere to be seen, she starts freaking out. Just a little bit.

“Ward?” she yells, “Trip?”

But no one answers her. She feels like she's never felt more alone in ther entire life than in this moment. She wishes she could just stay in her bed with Ward by her side. Just lay in soft bedsheets, talk with the man she lo-; the man she's happy with.

“Halo?” she yells once again, this time to no one in particular. When she hears no response, she kicks the bricks frustrated. But when she does, she sees a hand under the concrete. “Oh no,” she whispers, terrified.

She kneels and starts digging. There's like a ton of the hardcore and her fingers start bleeding within seconds, but she doesn't care. She refuses to believe it's one of her friends, but she has a feeling in the pit of her stomach that tells her otherwise. When she notices the black edge of the sleeve with a SHIELD emblemat on it, she chokes. Tears start streaming down her face and she can't help them.

She just keeps digging. She ignores the tears and blood and dust, she ignores the fact that she can't catch her breath. She has no idea how long she does what she does. All she knows is that when she finally uncovers the face, she almost laughs.

Because it's not Trip or Ward, it's not even Hunter. It's Idaho, the mercenary Coulson hired to have a back-up. Sure, it's bad he's dead, but it's not like he was loyal to SHIELD in the first place. It's not like Skye really cared about him.

That's why she only closes his eyes and kisses him on his dirty forhead. There's nothing much she can do. It still sucks, the fact that he died alone, serving the cause he didn't really believe in.

She raises on her feet when she hears her name. “Skye?” she turns around and trips, she's not sure on what, and she sees Trip.

He's got blood on his face and he limps, but he seems to be fine. “ _Ohmygodohmygodohmygod,_ ” she whispers and runs to him to hug him. Senior agent seems to be shocked by that, but he hugs her back. “I'm so glad you're alive.”

“Are you okay?” Trip asks her, checking for possible injuries. But Skye doesn't seem to be affected by the explosion as much as everyone else – sure, she has blood on her face and she has bruises _everywhere,_ but except for that, she's pretty much okay.

Until… “Where's Ward?” she says, sounding frantically. “Have you seen him?”

“I didn't. I saw some Hydra agents, but that's it. You didn't find him?”

“No,” Skye whispers, looking around. “I saw Bishop and Idaho, and all those Hydra agents. They're all dead. _All_ of them.”

“Hey,” Trip puts his hand on her shoulder, trying to comfort her as much as he can, “I'm sure he's fine. It's a huge space, he's probably just knocked out and waking up as we speak. We'll find him.”

And although it's not much, it makes Skye feel better. Because she cares, more than she's willing to admit.

“I contacted the base,” Trip adds, “the first thing after I woke up. They're not sure what caused the explosion, but Mac's on it. They're sending a quinjet to get us.”

“Right,” Skye mumbles under her breath, still looking around. She places one of her hands in the outside pocket of her tac gear. It's there, a small, silver star Ward gave her a while ago. Since then, she never left the base without it. Sometimes she wears it on a necklace, but usually she hides it in different pockets, where she can touch it.

It somehow makes her calm down. There's nothing special about it, really, it's just a stupid piece of jewerlly, but it means the world to her. Just like he does, after two moths of something in the shape of a relationship.

“Waaaaard,” Trip yells, catching her completley off guard. She almost jumps and then starts thinking logically. If they were together when the building exploded, he should be somewhere near the place she woke up.

“How about I go check there?” she asks, waving her hand at the ruins near Jessica Bishop's body. Trip nodds his head and turns around to yell his friend's name once more.

And Skye walks again. She starts limping at some point, but she doesn't think there's something wrong with her leg, maybe just a pulled muscle. She tries not to look at the bodies. She's almost next to the two Hydra agents, when she hears a sounds of struggle. It seems to be coming from the other side of what used to be a building, where there's still a piece of wall, separating her from whatever is happening.

She quickly asseses the situation and pulls out the gun she has in one of her many pockets. She lost the first one during the explosion, but luckily, she's not the one to come unprepared. She loads it and slowly moves to the wall, making her way to the hole that apparently used to be the door to the other room.

When she looks through it, she almost shouts. She sees Grant. The most important thing is that he's alive and he doesn't seem to be hurt too much. But then she notices the rest. He's restrained and she can see five men dressed in black, each one with a skull on the back of their tac gears. They seem to be trying to get Ward inside the black van standing next to them, but he's putting on quite a fight.

She knows she has no real chances. Even if she manages to win, there's still a possibility one of the men will simply take Ward to wherever he wants to take him. She looks back, checking if Trip's anywhere to be seen.

He's not. And she knows she needs to act. So she does what her heart tells her – although her mind is screaming not to do it. She points the gun at one of the men and attacks. Her moves are smooth and she manages to knock out two Hydra agents before the rest of them fully realise what's going on. They must be still dumbfounded after the explosion.

But, just like she feared, when she's fighting the fourth one, the fifth hits Grant on the head with his gun and brutally pulls him inside the van. Skye wants to move, shoot him, kick him, but at the same moment her opponent, already guessing what she wants to do, kicks her in the stomach. She drops the gun and at the time she straightens herself, the van is leaving.

With Grant Ward inside, apparently unconcious.

“Skye?” she hears Trip yelling from somewhere. She wants to cry. She feels like she screwed up, she _knows_ she screwed up.

Trip finds her when she falls on the ground. There're no more tears in her eyes. “What happened?” the older agent asks, his voice cold, full in specialist mode.

It takes a moment for Skye to answer, but when she does, she sounds like there's nothing left in this world for her. Well, at this point she feels like this actually might be the truth. “He's gone,” she whispers, her voice hoarsed, “they took him.”

 


	2. the search

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \+ it's been a month since i last posted anything (it happens to be this very same story) bc i had a writer's block, but i'm alive and kicking now.  
> \+ this chapter is slightly shorter and probably terrible, but i'm just gonna roll with it. i hope the rest of this story will be more fun.  
> \+ i don't have a beta and i don't really own anything.

_Sometimes the best moments come to us by suprise. Our life is falling apart, but we find love, that one person that helps us put the pieces back together; something constant in our life leaves and we find out, we never really needed it at all. ~~I wish it was that simple.~~ It is that simple._

 

Jemma comes back to the base shortly after Ward is taken. If Skye was to guess – it probably doesn't look good for them to be losing agents. And it's not really safe for her to stay in Hydra facility, when they're hunting down SHIELD agents.

But she doesn't come alone. There's a beautiful creature with long legs, who also happens to be Hunter's ex-wife and, apparently, Hartley's best friend. They meet during the debriefing and Skye can tell she's a great agent, but also a pretty cool person. But she doesn't stay to talk to her, she only gives Fitz reassuring smile (because he had no idea Jemma was on a mission) and comes back to her room, to search for Ward.

That's what she does everyday now. She stays in her room, avoids the rest of the team, and hacks through hundreds of Hydra's files to find a single trace of the man she's lost. It almost becomes an obsession after about two weeks, but she's determined to find him. Coulson tells her to stop, multiple times. He's hurting, since Ward was basically his right hand, but doesn't really show it. Instead, he tells Skye he's probably as good as dead.

She doesn't leave her room for three days after that.

Sometimes people come to visit her, bring her food or flowers. Usually it's Trip, since he's basically her best friend now. They talk, sometimes watch a movie. Trip likes to share stories about Ward. It's interesting really, how much he's changed since they met in the academy.

Fitz comes sometimes, too. They usually just sit arm to arm on her bed, both burried in their laptop – Fitz is doing some work that needs to be done, and Skye just… keeps looking. She doesn't think about giving up, not even when there's nowhere else to look.

She breaks down one night, three weeks after the mission. She hasn't left the base since, barely left her room, so Bobbi is kind of suprised when she meets her one night in the kitchen. Everyone else is asleep when she walks in and sees the brunette sitting by the counter, clutching a mug in her hands.

“Can't sleep?” the older agent asks, moving to the cabinets. Only then she notices the expression on Skye face – pure despair. “You okay?” she stops dead on her tracks.

“What if I'm never going to find him?” Skye asks quitely, not even looking up. It takes a few seconds for Bobbi to realise what she's talking about.

“Hey,” she walks closer to the counter and reaches for younger agent's hands, “don't say that. You're doing everything you can and I'm sure you'll find him, eventually,” she doesn't mention _alive_ or _well_ because she's a spy since a long time.

“I don't know where else to look,” Skye states, finally looking at the older agent. “I've hacked Hydra over and over again and they don't mention anything about any SHIELD agents,” her voice is sad, she sounds broken – but she doesn't cry.

“They must've hid it somewhere deep. But from what I hear, you're quite the badass. I'm sure you'll find it, eventually,” Bobbi pats her shoulder.

But Skye doesn't seem convinced. “What if there's nothing to hide? What if they just killed him?”

And that's when Bobbi's expression changes. She looks like she's deep in thoughs in a second, and Skye sends her a questioning look. “What if you can't find it, because it's not there?” she asks slowly.

“What do you-,” but then it hits her. It would be too easy for Hydra to just hide a really important, classified files somewhere inside their archive. It would be much more efficient to store those kind of informations somewhere no one would think to look.

Like inside of SHIELD.

“Thank you,” she breathes and leaves the kitchen before Bobbi even has a chance to ask, what she's planning.

Back in her room, she pulls out her old, used laptop and starts typing the second a familiar logo appears on her screen. She finds the recent protocols but when she doesn't find anything satisfying, she moves to the closed cases.

And after about an hour of searching, she finds it. _Protocol Marina_ is nothing she's ever heard of, and it's burried under tons of fiascos Fury tried years before she was born. At first, she's not even sure it's the right page, but as she scrolls through the files – and it's not much – she realises, this isn't something SHIELD would create.

It's messy – there's no order there. A couple of files – Ward's is among them, and her heart ships a beat when she sees a familiar picture – followed by an article about some old SHIELD scientist gone missing ten years before and more personal files.

It's only the last document she finds really useful. It's a letter of initials, followed by a few random words. She finds GDW among them – right under KLP – and reads the following: _in progress, resistant._

She doesn't know what it means, but she knows it's bad.

She also knows he's not dead. Not yet.

 

–

 

The rest of the files doesn't give her much either, but it's a good place to start. She decides to buy Bobbi a fruit baskett or something equally ridiculous to thank her for her help. Sure, she would probably come up with this herself, but it would took her at least two more weeks.

She's about to close her laptop and call it a night, when her phone beeps with an incoming message. And that's odd, because almost no one has her number. Well, there's Trip and Fitz and Jemma and Coulson, but they're all in the base.

And then there's Ward.

She takes the phone and manages to unlock it after her first try. But the text is not from one of her friends.

 

**Unknown**

i hear you've been searching for grant ward.

 

_Who are you? Where did you get this number?_

 

**Unknown**

it's not important – the important thing is, i'm looking for him too.

 

_Why?_

 

**Unknown**

you're not the only one who cares about him.

 

_If you're so desperate to find him, why won't you tell me who are you?_

 

She waits a few seconds, but the answer never comes. Instead comes an encrypten phone call. She hestitates before picking up – she knows it's not smart to do so, but after finding a new lead she's just so desperate to find help. Coulson will likely just tell her it doesn't prove anything, although it's clearly not the case.

It's probably just easier for him to pretend he's not coming back, to move on. Hope is a dangerous thing these days. So is trust.

But she picks up anyway.

“I almost thought you were going to ignore me,” she hears a male voice that's both familiar and unknown. He sounds cocky and sure of himself and that makes Skye want to wipe out a smirk from his face, whoever he is.

“Who are you?” she asks, determined.

“Oh, I'm not going to tell you that, sweetheart,” it should sound dangerous, but in this cocky voice, it's just annoying.

“You don't get to call me that, you don't even know me,” she hisses back, already regretting answering her phone. For all she knows, he could be tracing her right now and have a team bursting through the door as they speak.

“But I know _of_ you,” there're a few seconds of silence, “Okay, I probably sound like a mobster right now. I'm not, and I'm not Hydra. I used to be SHIELD, actually.”

Well, that's news.

“Why 'used to'?” she replies dryly.

“I was on a mission when all hell broke loose. W-, I've gone MIA after I found out there's nowhere to go back to,” he somehow sounds melancholic.

“Why did you left your safe house? I asume there was a safehouse.”

“It was,” this time, his voice sounds sad, “it just wasn't safe anymore.”

Yeah, Skye thinks, I know the drill.

“Anyway,” when he speaks up again, his voice is way more cheerful. It isn't actually aproperiate considering the circumctances, but she rolls with it. “The thing is, I'm looking for Grant Ward too. He's not the only person Hydra took from me. I think the two of us can help eachother.”

Skye considers it for a moment, but it's obvious what her answer will be. “Fine, where do we start?”

“We're gonna have to meet up, you know,” he says, “tomorrow, 5 pm sharp. I'll text you the adress, I think some bar will be okay with me, how about you?”

“Wait,” she stops him, “how do I know I can trust you?”

There's another moment of silence, followed by a loud sigh.

“Because,” he says, “the person you lost? He's my brother.”

And with that, the line goes silent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \+ BOOM! guess who's that on the phone!!  
> \+ [tumblr](http://natsclnt.tumblr.com)


	3. the departure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> skye meets her mysterious contact.   
> (song: where's my love by syml)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's been a long time, i'm aware and sorry. but just today i was going through my works and i realised i completely forgot about that one, and that's not what i wanted at all. this story is actually pretty important to me, and so i'm not going to abandon it.

_Meeting new people is not as easy at it may seem, for some people. Getting attached to them, calling them your friends, lovers, family. But losing them? Losing them is the worst possible thing that can ever happen to you. Because suddenly, you feel that emptiness in your heart, you turn around and that person's not there to laugh at your jokes or comfort you. And at some point you just realise. You realise, you're lonely, even if you're not. You're alone._

 

Skye leaves SHIELD in a hurry and when she's standing in the garage with keys she took from Coulson's office when he weren't looking, she realises she's not coming back, at least not anytime soon. She should feel sad about it, leaving her family, but instead, all she feels is peace. It's like: something comes and something goes.

She doesn't write a message. She knows that driving out of the garage with her stuff in the duffel bag on the passanger's seat will get their attention, but she'll be long gone when they realise she's disappeared. There might be a slight pang of guilt inside of her, but that doesn't stop her.

Nothing will probably stop her, at this point, when she finally sees hope. They basically turned their backs on her, told her Ward's as good as dead, but she _knew_ he's alive. And now she has a proof. And a partner in crime, hopefully.

Obviously, Skye's not stupid – she did a little digging when she hung up on the phone. She remembered Grant talking about his family – his older brother, Christian, running for senator, a terrible creature, and then his younger siblings – Thomas and Rosie. There was a lot of info about Christian on the web, but she decided it wasn't him.

Instead, she started looking into Thomas. There wasn't much – apparently, he found himself a hacker, or became one himself. The only things she found were a birth certificate and a redacted SHIELD file that mentioned his name during an op.

She didn't even knew who to look for. There was no photo of him attached to the file and running through different databases with his date of birth turned out to be a fiasco. The only hope she has now is that he knows how she looks.

And that he really is who he says he is.

She hotwires a car a few meters away from some trashy dinner in the middle of nowhere, where she knows for sure there're no cameras. She feels kind of bad about it, so she leaves the SHIELD SUV with the car keys inside and a note attached to the windshield. It won't bring those people any good when SHIELD finds them, but she suspects that will at least buy her some time.

The car she _borrows_ is a beaten-up Honda. The smell of cigarettes inside is way to intensive so she rides with both windows open, although it's pretty cold outside. The radio isn't working, so she plays music from her phone and tries to keep her mind out of the problems for time being. (She fails, obviously.)

She gets to the bar Ward's – hopefully – brother texted her at exactly four fifty eight. She takes her duffel bag and doesn't close the door of the car, kind of hoping it's the last she sees of it. In the back of her mind is a disturbing thought – what if she's walking straight into a trap? Or what if he tells her to give him time and she has nowhere to go back to? Or what if he doesn't show up at all?

But she ignores the thoughts and enters the bar – and just as she does so, she gets a new text. She checks her phone to see it's from the same number.

 

**Unknown**

back booth, black leather jacket. tell jack behind the bar you're here with doug if he asks.

 

Skye raises an eyebrow at that, but starts walking anyway. She's right next to the bar, when someone whistles loudly. She closes her eyes, rolling them eternaly, and turns around, wearing the best fake smile she manages to make. She hopes she looks at least a little bit normal.

“Whatcha doing here, sweetheart?” a guy on the barstool asks her. He looks at least twice her age and he's visibly drunk.

The bartender all but smacks him on the head at that. “Shut up, Danny.” Then, she turns his head so that he can look directly at Skye. “Can I help you, sugar?” he has an accent she can't exactly pinpoint. Remembering the text, she smiles again.

“Nah, thanks. I'm here to see Doug,” she sing-songs, her voice cheerful and sweet.

The bartender sighs. “Bastard, always gettin' the best,” he says, more to himself than to her. She almost raises an eyebrow, but remembers she should stay in the character. Instead, she smiles even wider. Jack looks at her again, this time with a little smirk. “Have fun.”

“Thanks,” she replies happily, and goes to the back booth, pretending she knows exactly what she's doing.

So now she knows this Doug, or whatever his name really is, is a regular in that trashy bar somewhere on the back road. That means he can't be a Hydra agent trying to take her as well. Or can he?

Only one booth is taken. She's almost facing his back, but she can see he's wearing a black leather jacket. There's an empty glass in front of him. When he hears footsteps, he turns around and stands up almost immidiately.

She stops dead in her tracks. Because oh, he is, without a doubt, a Ward. She sees the very same sharp cheekbones and there's the same smirk on his lips. He's also tall, just like Grant, and kind of muscular.

He acts as if he knows her, and it takes Skye aproximately five seconds to realise he's putting an act, because Jack the bartender is staring at them from the distance.

“Is so good to see you,” Grant's brother says, Thomas says, and even their voices are simliar. He says it cockily and Skye realises it's probably his thing. “Take a seat.”

He leads her to the booth and she puts her duffel on the couch before facing him. He's not smirking so openly anymore, and that's probably because Jack can't see them anymore.

“It's nice to finally meet you, Skye,” he says. She nodds, waiting for the rest. She looks at him, then. The resemblance between him and his brother hits her again. “My name's Thomas, but I'm pretty sure you know that by now.”

“I do,” she's suprised her voice is so calm, while inside everything is screaming and jumping. She wants to ask questions, she wants to find out why he's suddenly so interested in Grant since they didn't really see each other in years. Instead, she waits.

“I know you must have a lot of questions. I have a few myself,” his voice is serious, and even though Skye doesn't know him at all, she feels like this doesn't really suit him. But at the same time, he looks like a man who's been sad for a while now. She remembers him mentioning something about losing someone.

Someone important to him.

“First of all,” she finally starts, after a few seconds of silence, “I want to know how did you find me. And why now? He went missing almost three weeks ago.”

Thomas takes a deep breath. “I found the file in old SHIELD's archives by accident a few months ago and I've been trying to figure out the initials of the agents every since. I found about a half of them by now, all of them missing or found dead after a few months of silence. The medical files weren't much of a help except for one thing: the agents on the list, their brains weren't… working the way they were supposed to.”

“Like-,” Skye tries her best to not sound distressed at all, “brainwashed?”

He nodds. “That's what I thought, but I didn't find anything about that. I went through lots of medical bullshit but it gave me nothing except for a few theories that had no sense whatsoever. But I were searching for agents still. There were new initials showing up every once in a while. One day, about three weeks ago, my brother's showed up. I managed to determine five ex-SHIELD agents with the same initials and I've been trying to track every single one of them. I wasn't worried about Grant much, because I knew he went underground. But when I realised neither one of those agents were the person on the list, I conntacted an old friend of mine. That was two days ago. Since then, I've been trying to find a way to contact someone from inside the base, someone who cared about my brother. And that's how I found you.”

Skye thinks about his words. It's not much – she wants to know how exactly he found her, who was the old friend and how did he find the list in the first place, but decides it's not important at this point. Instead, she asks one question she knows he's not suspecting.

“How did you know he went underground?” her voice is kind of hoarsed at this point.

“What?” just as she suspected, Thomas is suprised by that. But he quickly recovers. “I-. We spoke, okay? He contacted me, from time to time. Asked me how I've been. We didn't-,” he goes silent and Skye realises he's trying his best to sound normal, just like she was just a few minutes before. She realises he needs someone to comfort him, but at the same time she feels like she's not that person. “We don't have normal relationship, but we love each other in some weird, messed up way,” he looks up at her and there's not a single trace of a smirk left. All she sees is sadness. “He mentioned you, you know? Never told me your actual name, but he told me there's someone… He said he never felt anything like this and that he's afraid he would destroy all of it. I told him to go for it,” he smiles, then, but it's a sad smile and it doesn't reach his eyes.

Skye can't take it any longer. She squeezes the hand he keeps on the table.

“You know he loves you, right?” she asks silently, looking at him with sympathy.

Thomas doesn't take his hand, but closes his eyes and tries to compose himself. He succeeds, because in a few seconds his face is back to being normal.

“I'm pretty sure he loves you too, more than you know,” he finally supplies. Skye closes her eyes – because it's not like she doesn't know that. She knows the two of them is something different than a work relationship, more than just a strong partnership. She knows _she_ has an awful lot of things for Grant. They just… they're not the kind to talk about these stuff, to exchange 'i love yous' everyday. She doubts anyone in their line of work is a person like that. She supposes it just comes with a job.

(Well, dysfunctional or nonexistent families don't make it simple either.)

They sit in silence for a while, with only chatter of the rest bar guests and occasional laughs in the background. The silence between them is suddenly stopped by the buzzing of Skye's phone. She doesn't need to check it to know _they_ realised she's gone.

She takes a deep breath and speaks.

“Do you have a place to stay?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \+ [tumblr](http://natsclnt.tumblr.com)

**Author's Note:**

> \+ [tumblr](http://natsclnt.tumblr.com)  
> \+ title (of the series and the story) is from final call by koven  
> \+ the star/necklace ward gave skye is [this one](http://constantbaubling.com/product/silver-star-necklace-925-sterling-silver-delicate-small-rolo-link-chain-with-little-simple-rhodium-plated-small-pendant-charm-wishing-star)


End file.
